


Compromises

by faeriepuke



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-31 01:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3959479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeriepuke/pseuds/faeriepuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth married Charles when Ciel died. They're 'perfect' for each other, but only in the eyes of company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compromises

My life is a poem. Perfect, precise, tactfully planned and full of misconception. My life is a poem, because, with it’s pretty appearance, underlining the complexion of content and peace, a passive war beneath tumults and churns: but they are for the private eyes in my poem; or, perhaps, sometimes, people who can see through the spaces, see the metaphors, the juxtapositions and all the other things any well-educated pubescent girl ought to know about. But I never really was any good at poetry, was I?

Not good at many things so it would seem, but I had a clear face and my hair was never dry and my clothes were kept without crinkles and heavied me when I walked. I was what you might call a picture of virginal glory, the kind of child the magazines describe, the kind of child spoilt by her Father’s fortune and companied always by a Brother with all the teachings of appropriate pre-requisites from an aunty of red and a Mother who was strong and wonderful with a warm wing only we were to be privy of. I was happy, and I was naïve. Politics? Philosophy? I knew nought of. But it’s these days, the pathetic ones cold as the winter outside that makes my mind often slip upon the subject of the beings of a Godly power. I come from a Christian household, naturally -- I was told God would take care of me in a pre-determined wonder. But Arthur Hugh Clough is my bedside friend as of recent, and we think together a lot.

When I was fourteen my fiancé died. I thought perhaps it was an elaborate joke, an escape maybe from the clutches of his blood duty and cynical servitude. I thought the boy in the casket was a doll, a beautiful ploy by a toy maker (Because he was a doll, wasn’t he? Frail, beautiful.)  His purpose was for display however, never for the children’s laughter.

When Ciel died a dystopia routed itself somewhere inside me. I watched again the Ceremonials that were for the same boy just two years ago. Somehow it hurt as much as the first time, then I suppose that heartache can never feel so familiar.

I’m happier now. Older. I have a better bust, I have cheek bones. I have translucent little scars on my seemingly flat belly, stretched in pregnancy, and I have a husband and I have a duty.

The bed is warm. The air that comes through the window is cool and comforting and the room is partially lit with the gas light. We’re sipping tea like we hadn’t just been battling bare and clinging to each other. The fresh air makes sweat laden flesh that is above the surface of our sheet cold, but I’m already armpit deep in the bed anyway because I like to cover myself when I can, keep some modesty about my person at least despite the tangled hair and red appearance. I glance off to my side at the bare bodied Charles who has his hand by his mouth, yawning blissfully upon the clutches of slumber that stays with him. His lips are reddened, his lids half lidded, and his fringe sits as a full sort as it does in its disarrangement. For a small moment I’m sizing him up with a casual gaze that seems to subconsciously know of its rights to do so. But when he sees the attention I smile at him and briefly he looks at me as though this movement of my mouth is foreign and otherworldly to him before mimicking it.

It must be almost midnight. We take early nights often because Grey contends with royal Butlery and I have a small coven of curly haired babes, but this evening was one of _those_ evenings, the sorts that only end up soggy and sleepy and unsatisfied, always so unsatisfied. I shall be looking at myself in the morning with a mirror for I’m quite sure something had torn or bruised, but I became numb and I came complete and now I yawn, myself.

There’s a noise in our silence, a deep, gurgling growl. I recognise it instantly to be from my husband’s chasm of a stomach. He lifts his weight from the mattress, and I assume he’s decided to make right of his ailment as he’s dressing himself in a gown, dedicating himself to his unappeasable appetite: as he does.

“I’m going to get something to eat.” He says something, but he’ll probably harvest half the pantry or basket his arms with cold meat and stuff fruits and nuts into the pockets of his cheeks like a hamster.

“Don’t wake anybody.” Our servants are honest and hardworking and it would be cruel at this hour. But he should know that better than I.

“Mhn.”

When Charles leaves I abandon our nest, too. My nightie, strewn on the ground is reclaimed and loved once more. Even its neckline is flamboyant.

The window is closed and I light a candle before putting it on the candelabra’s spike, a difficult move of mine for hot wax drips onto my index and I hiss through my teeth slightly. I suppose I don’t trust Grey to _not_ literally bring to bed the whole pantry so I make my start to supervise towards the kitchen. The Corridors are dark save for the weak glow of my candle. The bedroom leaks light over the threshold and I can just barely see with enough clarity the portraits peppered down the hallway of our bedroom. There is a long line of ancestry Charles keeps of the previous Earls. On the other side are head and shoulder photographs kept in the fanciful frames of my demand of us. The occupants of now. There are three little cocktails of Grey and Midford at varying ages. Our eldest is four, now.

Endeavouring down the little gallery is the defiant gaze of steely blue, an almost _cute_ face shape and a nose he has unarguably inherited from his Grandfather. Charles Grey is pictured with no irregularities. Beautiful in shape with skin that both looks and feels like porcelain. Hair that frames his face like waterfalls, silver streams of decadence. Beside him, is I. Blonde curls and round eyes, a collarbone purposely made display of. The expensive earrings he had bought me last Christmas. I do give it to him, they are a _lovely_ pair of earrings. But I still regret not wearing my Mother’s.

My fingers lift to the Lady behind the glass. It’s cold at touch. I’m tracing over her full lips. Maybe I look rather vain out of context, but look how elegant she is. Look how all those low heeled shoes and puffy dresses, the extensive collection of teddy bears and fairy-tale books never existed in her yesterday. I can feel myself scorn at her. She shall, with inevitability always be elegant and beautiful. But I will age and sag, and for a brief moment I understand the beauty of a young death.

I don’t get to the staircase before I feel a small hand touch my thigh.

“Mama, why are you awake?”

I dip to him and scoop him up to slot onto my hip, mindful of the candle.

“Why are _you_ awake, Hmm?”

“The floorboards woke me.”

“My apologies, darling.”

I’m a nervous Mother. I always have been. Having children was always a priority, both with  practicality and for my own heart. I need someone to love, who will stay forever. Now I have three of them, and my oldest, Julius, has his head on my shoulder, quiet and listless, lulled by the steps I now make to return to my chamber. A nervous Mother, because I can’t tell how well he is dressed and a cold isn’t something I wish for my child to beget.

The room upon return is at an inviting temperature, and it’s only until now can I notice the slight smell of the frenzy. I place Julius on the edge of the bed, and he blows out my candle before excitedly crawling to become under the covers. While he lays I fold the duvet at the end of the bed over him and join him beneath the thick, warm weight.

“I was dreaming, Mama.”

“What was it about?”

Julius raises a sluggish hand to the pit of his left eye. He bores his fist into it as to rub away the sleep for a decent reply while the fragments of a wonderland wrap around his short curls. In many ways to my memory he reminds me much of Edward when we were both little children. I wonder if his sisters love him as much as I love my Brother.

He looks a lot like me when the eye first befalls upon him. Saffron tresses and rounded, green eyes that speckle towards their centre with a yellowish brown. Chartreuse, a pedantic might call them.

Yes, a lot like me. But it’s his expressions that hit home the most, it’s the way his nose crumples when he tastes the lemon in his tea, or the way his lips purse in pondering pensiveness like they do currently. Are their daffodils in his mind or something of a terror? He’s only four, but he is as good as ten.

Julius, he fills me with love. And maybe that’s what I love about Charles Grey. I love his children, I love him for giving me them. I love him: when he is gone and my children remain.

“I was watching a fish swimming in the lake and I reached out to touch it but I fell in and there was a dog that was trying to catch the fish but it tried to catch me instead and-… and…”

“Gracious, what a frightening dream to have!”

He giggles and cuddles into my chest suddenly. I pet his head and the door opens.

Charles is carrying a wooden chopping board with an assortment of sorts in its centre of cheese, a vine of grapes and a pile of cream crackers. On its surface he balances two glasses with a thimble worth of what looks like port or wine. A romantic midnight feast, is it?

He cuts the air with the board towards me and I take it gingerly while he climbs into the bed. When he discovers the small person buried into me his eyes roll in time for the head at my chest to turn towards the strong smell of stilton to miss his Father’s impatience.

“Can I have some?”

“Mhn!” I’m cutting a piece of goat’s cheese away for Charles is already on the brie, generously piling his cracker and garnishing it with a grape. “Now, darlings, don’t get crumbs in the bed.”

I am surprised when I feel Grey’s palm sliding across my back to hook his arm around my waist. I look at him and he’s looking at me and Julius is crunching on his cracker and Grey gives me a chaste kiss. Such a contrast it seems from before! But I find my mouth spreading into a smile in a very natural way and I kiss him in return, just as sweetly. If we were illustrations in a fairy-tale book, we’d be the three bears before the morrow where goldilocks would come to ruin our privileges for her benefit.

When the cheese was devoured mainly to Charles he tells Julius not to tell his sisters or else they’d become jealous and he wishes us goodnight and I walk him to his own room anyway for it is dark. When I return to Charles it’s ten to one and he’s between my legs again as though he loves me and for ten minutes I love him, too.

 

 

My husband is his best once fed.

 

 


End file.
